He nonetheless remembers the primary gunshot. For an immediate, standing on the operating board of the motorcade automobile, he entertained the useless hope that perhaps it was only a firecracker or a blown tire. But he knew weapons and he knew higher. Then got here one other shot. And one other. And the president slumped down.
For so many nights afterward, he relived that grisly second in his desires. Now, 60 years later, Paul Landis, one of many Secret Service brokers simply ft away from President John F. Kennedy on that fateful day in Dallas, is telling his story in full for the primary time. And in at the least one key respect, his account differs from the official model in a means that will change the understanding of what occurred in Dealey Plaza.
Mr. Landis has spent a lot of the intervening years fleeing historical past, making an attempt to neglect that unforgettable second etched within the consciousness of a grieving nation. The reminiscence of the explosion of violence and the determined race to the hospital and the devastating flight dwelling and the wrenching funeral with John Jr. saluting his fallen father — it was all an excessive amount of, too torturous, a lot in order that Mr. Landis left the service and Washington behind.
Until lastly, after the nightmares had handed ultimately, he might give it some thought once more. And he might examine it. And he realized that what he learn was not fairly proper, not as he remembered it. As it seems, if his recollections are right, the much-discussed “magic bullet” might not have been so magic in spite of everything.
His reminiscence challenges the idea superior by the Warren Commission that has been the topic of a lot hypothesis and debate through the years — that one of many bullets fired on the president’s limousine hit not solely Kennedy however Gov. John B. Connally Jr. of Texas, who was driving with him, in a number of locations.
Mr. Landis’s account, included in a forthcoming memoir, would rewrite the narrative of one in all fashionable American historical past’s most earth-shattering days in an vital means. It might not imply any greater than that. But it might additionally encourage those that have lengthy suspected that there was a couple of gunman in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, including new grist to one of many nation’s enduring mysteries.
As with all issues associated to the assassination, after all, his account raises questions of its personal. Mr. Landis remained silent for 60 years, which has fueled doubts even for his former Secret Service companion, and recollections are tough even for these sincerely sure of their recollections. A pair components of his account contradict the official statements he filed with authorities instantly after the taking pictures, and a number of the implications of his model can’t be simply reconciled to the present document.
But he was there, a firsthand witness, and it’s uncommon for brand new testimony to emerge six many years after the actual fact. He has by no means subscribed to the conspiracy theories and stresses that he’s not selling one now. At age 88, he stated, all he needs is to inform what he noticed and what he did. He will go away it to everybody else to attract conclusions.
“There’s no goal at this point,” he stated in an interview final month in Cleveland, the primary time he has talked about this with a reporter prematurely of his guide, “The Final Witness,” which can be printed by Chicago Review Press on Oct. 10. “I just think it had been long enough that I needed to tell my story.”
What it comes all the way down to is a copper-jacketed 6.5-millimeter projectile. The Warren Commission determined that one of many bullets fired that day struck the president from behind, exited from the entrance of his throat and continued on to hit Mr. Connally, in some way managing to injure his again, chest, wrist and thigh. It appeared unbelievable {that a} single bullet might do all that, so skeptics referred to as it the magic bullet concept.
Investigators got here to that conclusion partly as a result of the bullet was discovered on a stretcher believed to have held Mr. Connally at Parkland Memorial Hospital, so that they assumed it had exited his physique throughout efforts to avoid wasting his life. But Mr. Landis, who was by no means interviewed by the Warren Commission, stated that’s not what occurred.
In reality, he stated, he was the one who discovered the bullet — and he discovered it not within the hospital close to Mr. Connally however within the presidential limousine lodged behind the seat behind the place Kennedy was sitting.
When he noticed the bullet after the motorcade arrived on the hospital, he stated he grabbed it to thwart memento hunters. Then, for causes that also appear fuzzy even to him, he stated he entered the hospital and positioned it subsequent to Kennedy on the president’s stretcher, assuming it might in some way assist docs determine what occurred. At some level, he now guesses, the stretchers will need to have been pushed collectively and the bullet was shaken from one to a different.
“There was nobody there to secure the scene, and that was a big, big bother to me,” Mr. Landis stated. “All the agents that were there were focused on the president.” A crowd was gathering. “This was all going on so quickly. And I was just afraid that — it was a piece of evidence, that I realized right away. Very important. And I didn’t want it to disappear or get lost. So it was, ‘Paul, you’ve got to make a decision,’ and I grabbed it.’”
Mr. Landis theorizes that the bullet struck Kennedy within the again however for some cause was undercharged and didn’t penetrate deeply, due to this fact popping again out earlier than the president’s physique was faraway from the limousine.
Mr. Landis has been reluctant to invest on the bigger implications. He at all times believed that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone gunman.
But now? “At this point, I’m beginning to doubt myself,” he stated. “Now I begin to wonder.” That is so far as he’s keen to go.
A local of Ohio and son of a faculty sports activities coach, Mr. Landis doesn’t come throughout as a swaggering safety agent. He needed to stretch to fulfill the 5-foot-8 top requirement when he joined the service, and will not accomplish that. “I’m too little now,” he stated, to make it in right now’s company. He is quiet and unassuming, wearing a coat and tie for an interview, his grey hair neatly trimmed. He has a bit of hassle listening to and speaks softly, however his thoughts is obvious and his recollections regular.
In latest years, he confided his story with a number of key figures, together with Lewis C. Merletti, a former director of the Secret Service. James Robenalt, a Cleveland lawyer and writer of a number of books of historical past, has deeply researched the assassination and helped Mr. Landis course of his recollections.
“If what he says is true, which I tend to believe, it is likely to reopen the question of a second shooter, if not even more,” Mr. Robenalt stated. “If the bullet we know as the magic or pristine bullet stopped in President Kennedy’s back, it means that the central thesis of the Warren Report, the single-bullet theory, is wrong.” And if Mr. Connally was hit by a separate bullet, he added, then it appeared potential it was not from Oswald, who he argued couldn’t have reloaded that quick.
Mr. Merletti, who has been pleasant with Mr. Landis for a decade, was unsure what to consider his account. “I don’t know if that story’s true or not, but I do know that the agents that were there that day, they were tormented for years by what happened,” he stated in an interview.
Mr. Merletti referred Mr. Landis to Ken Gormley, the president of Duquesne University and a distinguished presidential historian, who helped him discover an agent for his guide. In an interview, Mr. Gormley stated he was not shocked {that a} traumatized agent would come ahead all these years later, evaluating it to a dying declaration in authorized circumstances.
“It’s very common as people get to the end of their lives,” Mr. Gormley stated. “They want to make peace with things. They want to get on the table things they’ve been holding back, especially if it’s a piece of history and they want the record corrected. This does not look like a play by someone trying to get attention for himself or money. I don’t read it that way at all. I think he firmly believes this. Whether it fits together, I don’t know. But people can eventually figure that out.”
Mr. Landis’s account varies in a few respects from two written statements he filed within the week after the taking pictures. Aside from not mentioning discovering the bullet, he reported listening to solely two pictures. “I do not recall hearing a third shot,” he wrote. Likewise, he didn’t point out going into the trauma room the place Kennedy was taken, writing that he “remained outside by the door” when the primary girl went in.
Gerald Posner, writer of “Case Closed,” a 1993 guide that concluded that Oswald certainly killed Kennedy on his personal, stated he was doubtful. While he didn’t query Mr. Landis’s sincerity, Mr. Posner stated the story didn’t add up.
“People’s memories generally do not improve over time, and it is a flashing warning sign to me, about skepticism I have over his story, that on some very important details of the assassination, including the number of shots, his memory has gotten better instead of worse,” he stated.
“Even assuming that he is accurately describing what happened with the bullet,” Mr. Posner added, “it might mean nothing more than we now know that the bullet that came out of Governor Connally did so in the limousine, not on a stretcher in Parkland where it was found.”
Mr. Landis stated the studies he filed after the assassination included errors; he was in shock and had barely slept for 5 days as he centered on serving to the primary girl via the ordeal, he stated, and never paying sufficient consideration to what he submitted. He didn’t suppose to say the bullet, he stated.
It was not till 2014 that he realized that the official account of the bullet differed from his reminiscence, he stated, however he didn’t come ahead then out of a sense that he had made a mistake in placing it on the stretcher with out telling anybody in that pre-C.S.I., secure-the-crime-scene period.
“I didn’t want to talk about it,” Mr. Landis stated. “I was afraid. I started to think, did I do something wrong? There was a fear that I might have done something wrong and I shouldn’t talk about it.”
Indeed, his companion, Clint Hill, the legendary Secret Service agent who clambered onto the again of the dashing limousine in a futile effort to avoid wasting Kennedy, discouraged Mr. Landis from talking out. “Many ramifications,” Mr. Hill warned in a 2014 electronic mail that Mr. Landis saved and shared final month.
Mr. Hill, who has set out his personal account of what occurred in a number of books and interviews, solid doubt on Mr. Landis’s model on Friday. “I believe it raises concerns when the story he is telling now, 60 years after the fact, is different than the statements he wrote in the days following the tragedy” and informed in subsequent years, Mr. Hill stated in an electronic mail. “In my mind, there are serious inconsistencies in his various statements/stories.”
Mr. Landis’s rendezvous with historical past started within the small city of Worthington, Ohio, north of Columbus. After school and a stint within the Ohio Air National Guard, he was working in a clothes retailer when a household good friend described his job within the Secret Service. Intrigued, Mr. Landis joined in 1959 within the Cincinnati workplace, the place he chased thieves who swiped Social Security checks out of mailboxes.
A 12 months later, he was despatched to Washington the place he joined the protecting element for President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s grandchildren. After Kennedy was elected, Mr. Landis, code named Debut due to his youth, was assigned to protect the brand new president’s youngsters and later the primary girl, Jacqueline Kennedy, alongside Mr. Hill. Because the primary girl accompanied her husband to Dallas that fall day in 1963, Mr. Landis, then 28, was a part of the motorcade, driving the rear of the best operating board on the black Cadillac convertible, code named Halfback, simply ft behind the presidential limousine.
At the primary shot, Mr. Landis turned to look over his proper shoulder within the course of the sound however noticed nothing. Then he turned to the limousine and noticed Kennedy elevating his arms, evidently hit. Suddenly, Mr. Landis seen that Mr. Hill had leapt off their follow-up automobile and was sprinting towards the limousine. Mr. Landis thought of doing the identical however didn’t have an angle.
He stated he heard a second shot that sounded louder and eventually the deadly third shot that hit Kennedy within the head. Mr. Landis needed to duck to keep away from being splattered by flesh and mind matter. He knew immediately that the president was lifeless. Mr. Hill, now on the again of the limousine, turned again and confirmed it with a thumbs down.
Once they reached the hospital, Mr. Hill and Mr. Landis coaxed the distraught first girl to let go of her husband so he may very well be taken inside. After they exited the automobile, Mr. Landis seen two bullet fragments in a pool of vibrant pink blood. He fingered one in all them however put it again.
That’s when he stated he seen the intact bullet within the seam of the tufted darkish leather-based cushioning. He stated he slipped it into his coat pocket and headed into the hospital, the place he deliberate to present it to a supervisor, however within the confusion instinctively put it on Kennedy’s stretcher as a substitute.
The hospital’s senior engineer later discovered it when he was shifting Mr. Connally’s stretcher, by then empty, and bumped it towards one other stretcher within the corridor, ensuing within the bullet falling out.
The Warren Commission report stated that it “eliminated President Kennedy’s stretcher as a source of the bullet” as a result of the president remained on his stretcher whereas docs tried to avoid wasting his life and was not eliminated till his physique was positioned in a coffin.
Investigators decided that the bullet, designated Commission Exhibit 399, was fired by the identical C2766 Mannlicher-Carcano rifle discovered within the sixth ground of the Texas School Book Depository. They concluded that the bullet handed via Kennedy, then entered Mr. Connally’s proper shoulder, struck his rib, exited below his proper nipple, continued via his proper wrist and into his left thigh.
Doctors concurred that the only bullet might have prompted all of the injury. But the bullet was described as almost pristine and had misplaced just one or two grains of its unique 160 or 161 grains in weight, inflicting skeptics to doubt that it might have accomplished all that the fee stated it had. Still, ballistic consultants utilizing fashionable forensic methods concluded on the fiftieth anniversary of the assassination that the single-bullet concept was completely believable.
Mr. Landis stated he was shocked that the Warren Commission by no means interviewed him, however assumed that his supervisors had been defending the brokers, who had been out late the evening earlier than socializing (Mr. Landis till 5 a.m., though he insisted they weren’t drunk). “Nobody really asked me,” he stated.
Many photos of these days of mourning present Mr. Landis at Jacqueline Kennedy’s facet as she endured the rituals of a presidential farewell. Night after evening, these seconds of violence in Dallas saved replaying in his head, his personal private Zapruder movie on an countless loop. “The president’s head exploding — I could not shake that vision,” he stated. “Whatever I was doing, that’s all I was thinking about.”
With Mr. Landis and Mr. Hill nonetheless defending her, the previous first girl was in fixed movement within the months afterward. “She’d be in the back seat sobbing and you’d want to say something but it wasn’t really our place to say anything,” Mr. Landis recalled.
After six months, he couldn’t take it anymore and left the Secret Service. Haunted, he moved to Cape Cod in Massachusetts, then New York, then Ohio close to Cleveland. For many years, he made a residing in actual property and machine merchandise and home portray, something so long as it had nothing to do with defending presidents.
He was usually conscious of the conspiracy theories, but by no means learn a guide about them, or the Warren Commission report for that matter. “I just paid no attention to that,” he stated. “I just removed myself. I just felt I had been there. I had seen it, and I knew what I saw and what I did. And that’s all.”
He did a number of interviews in 2010 and thereafter, however by no means talked about discovering the bullet. Then, in 2014, an area police chief he knew gave him a replica of “Six Seconds in Dallas,” a 1967 guide by Josiah Thompson arguing that there have been a number of shooters. Mr. Landis learn it and believed the official account of the bullet was flawed.
That led to conversations with Mr. Merletti and Mr. Gormley and ultimately, after a few years, to his guide.
It was not simple. As he completed the manuscript, he stared on the laptop display screen, broke down and cried uncontrollably. “I didn’t realize that I had so many suppressed emotions and feelings,” he stated. “I just couldn’t stop. And that was just a huge emotional relief.”
Source: www.nytimes.com